In a reading in German, Ina Mutikainen and Marko Pantermöller will present the novel Unohdus (2024), which will be made accessible to a German audience for the first time with the help of student translations.

Ina Mutikainen's debut novel "Unohdus" (Forgetting) deals with the question of what is worse: forgetting or being forgotten. In recent years, many novels have been published on the subject of memory and memory disorders, but Mutikainen has a more than original perspective on this subject. In her story, she examines a fictional memory disorder, reverse dementia (dissociative hypodementia), in which the sufferers themselves do not forget, but are forgotten. The main character, Sonja, is studying film in Helsinki and is making a documentary film as her final project. Sonja is worried about her mother, who lives in Eastern Finland and shows signs of memory impairment, but everything turns out to be completely different, which doesn't make the situation any better for Sonja. At the same time, Helsinki neuroscientist Elias receives a "shipment" from his Russian research sponsors: a fragile-looking boy who doesn't sleep at night but can store everything he sees and hears in his memory with astonishing accuracy appears on his doorstep. Can forgetting be a blessing?
Unohdus is a multi-layered novel with numerous twists and turns and enormous potential for suspense, which skillfully explores the boundaries of speculative fiction and forces the reader to change perspective.

Mutikainen (b. 1987) holds a master's degree in screenwriting from the Helsinki School of Drama and has also studied cinematic sound design and Finnish language. She teaches reading and writing at a high school in Helsinki.

The event will take place at Ernst-Lohmeyer-Platz 3 in room 1.06